The Calligrapher — Yán Zhēnqīng 颜真卿

Tang master of robust regular script; co-creator of the enduring 'Yan style'.

Tang calligrapher (709–784), master of regular script/running script — the Tang moral paragon whose upright, muscular regular script became the model of Chinese integrity in writing. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

Liu Yu, the founding emperor of the Liu Song who rose from a soldier's cot to the throne in the year four hundred twenty, carries the name whose character promises abundance, the granary full and the robe loose. The yu was the ease of having more than enough, the opposite of want. His reign began in that surplus of fortune.

Common words & phrases

• 富裕 wealthy
• 宽裕 ample · well-off
• 充裕 abundant
• 丰裕 rich · plentiful

Read the story behind the character

In a well-kept home a family counts itself fu yu, wealthy, enough to renovate, while a budget leaves them kuan yu, comfortably off, and the harvest is chong yu, abundant, in the granaries. The word feng yu names a year rich and plentiful. The character is the state of having room, in the purse or the larder, to spare.

Why this character belongs on skin

裕 is abundance with the sleeves let out. Its radical is clothing — the garment radical, 衤 — joined to 谷, the valley: cloth cut full, a robe that falls in generous folds because the cutter refused to skimp. From that image of a well-made, unfamished garment the word grew to mean wealth of every kind — 裕 means ample, at ease, having room. The Confucians were suspicious of gold but not of this; the classical ideal was a household with enough — enough grain, enough leisure to practice rites, enough margin to be generous without counting the cost. Note what the character does not picture: coins, granaries, guards. It pictures fit. To be 裕 is to be cut for your own life, nothing pinching. To wear it is a quiet vow against scarcity-thinking — to leave seam allowance in every plan, and to let the wide cloth of your days hang as it was meant to.